rbread coach till you're deaf with the noise, and blind with the
dust, and sick with the crowd, and half dead for want of sodas and
brandies, and from going a whole morning without one cigarette! Not
to mention the inevitable apple-woman who invariably entangles herself
between your horse's legs, and the certainty of your riding down
somebody and having a summons about it the next day! If all that isn't
the rough of the Service, I should like to know what is. Why the hottest
day in the batteries, or the sharpest rush into Ghoorkhas or Bhoteahs,
would be light work, compared!" murmured Cecil with the most plaintive
pity for the hardships of life in the Household, while Rake, with the
rapid proficiency of long habit, braced, and buckled and buttoned,
knotted the sash with the knack of professional genius, girt on the
brightest of all glittering polished silver steel "Cut-and-Thrusts,"
with its rich gild mountings, and contemplated with flattering
self-complacency leathers white as snow, jacks brilliant as black
varnish could make them, and silver spurs of glittering radiance, until
his master stood full harnessed, at length, as gallant a Life Guardsman
as ever did duty at the Palace by making love to the handsomest
lady-in-waiting.

"To sit wedged in with one's troop for five hours, and in a drizzle too!
Houses oughtn't to meet until the day's fine; I'm sure they are in
no hurry," said Cecil to himself, as he pocketed a dainty, filmy
handkerchief, all perfume, point, and embroidery, with the interlaced B.
C., and the crest on the corner, while he looked hopelessly out of the
window. He was perfectly happy, drenched to the skin on the moors after
a royal, or in a fast thing with the Melton men from Thorpe Trussels
to Ranksborough; but three drops of rain when on duty were a totally
different matter, to be resented with any amount of dandy's lamentations
and epicurean diatribes.

"Ah, young one, how are you? Is the day very bad?" he asked with languid
wistfulness as the door opened.

But indifferent and weary--on account of the weather--as the tone was,
his eyes rested with a kindly, cordial light on the newcomer, a young
fellow of scarcely twenty, like himself in feature, though much smaller
and slighter in build; a graceful boy enough, with no fault in his face,
except a certain weakness in the mouth, just shadowed only, as yet, with
down.

A celebrity, the Zu-Zu, the last coryphee whom Bertie had translated
from a s